Home Made DVR, Love it and Hate it.

I have used my home made DVR for almost three years now. I love over the air HD TV so much I turned off cable almost two years ago. This computer DVR has paid for itself twice over. Only one problem. It uses 90 Watts of electricity every hour of every day for almost three years. (Actually, it used to use more but I have upgraded it twice since the beginning, new Hard drive and new CPU)

365 days x 3 years x 24 hours x 0.090 kilowatts x $0.10 = $236.52

That’s right. This thing cost me over $200 to run in the last three years.

24 hours x 0.090 kilowatts = 2.16 kilowatts

That’s right. This thing uses almost as much power as my refrigerator!

What am I going to do? I can not just turn it off. The entire family loves this thing. I need to make it better! Use less power. Be able to go in and out of suspend mode without missing a beat.

My goal is to make a system that uses less then 500 Watts a day. Remember a few months ago I made a “Green PC” It used 40 Watts. My new goal would cut that in half. It is a good thing I like messing around with computer stuff. Almost as much as I like alternative energy topics.